Karnataka govt preparing for eventuality on COVID-19 front

PTI, Apr 5, 2020, 9:07 PM IST

Bengaluru: The Karnataka government on Sunday discussed protocol for allocation of human resources in the event of a larger COVID-19 outbreak.

The Department of Health and Family Welfare convened a meeting of its top officers. It was led by P C Jaffer, Secretary to Government, Finance Department (Expenditure) and Nodal Officer, Capacity Building, under the guidance of Pankaj Kumar Pandey, Commissioner, Department of Health and Family Welfare.

During the meeting, the roles and responsibilities of personnel required for the smooth functioning of health facilities ranging from fever clinics to intensive care units at designated hospitals was outlined.

The team also mapped a detailed set of activities to ensure uninterrupted care for patients, from reception at the health facilities, to different stages of testing and referral to tertiary facilities.

“Even as the government has been fairly successful in containing unprecedented spread of COVID-19 in the state, we are not taking things lightly, and as such are preparing for any kind of eventuality so that the people of the State are not put to any kind of inconvenience,” Pandey said.

The government visualised hospital conditions under different stages of a pandemic and broke down essential activities, including non-clinical activities such as crowd management, food management, mobility and data entry into different buckets, he said.

“This allows us to assign specific roles to medical and non-medical staff for better efficiency. The government also plans to enlist volunteers to support facility functions in the event of a large number of cases, and develop training modules to enable them to carry out these functions,” he added.

The protocols also make provisions for tying up with community management teams to handle follow-ups, it was stated.

The Department, Pandey said, is in the process of identifying various roles that can be entrusted to the volunteers with minimum training or intense specialised trainings, adding, this will bring about clarity in their roles without any overlap in a real-world hospital scenario.

The protocols, once finalised, will be forwarded to the districts, allowing the heads of the institutions the flexibility to allot human resources according to their requirements and case load, officials noted.